Updates to Good Medical Practice Domains

As you may be aware from April to July last year the GMC ran a public consultation on a draft, updated version of Good Medical Practice. The new changes have focused on 4 main areas:

• Tackling discrimination and promoting fairness and inclusion. We included a duty to not abuse, discriminate against, bully, exploit, or harass anyone, or condone such behaviour by others. And we strengthened what our guidance says about inappropriate sexual behaviour between colleagues.

• Working in partnership with patients. We emphasised the responsibility of medical professionals to help patients make decisions for themselves. This includes a new duty to find out what matters to patients, so this can guide discussions about their care and treatment options.

• Working effectively with colleagues. We highlighted the need to show respect for the skills of all colleagues and to listen to their contributions.

• Leadership and organisational culture. We added a new duty to encourage Medical Professionals to develop leadership skills appropriate to their roles.

Making it work in practice

On a practical level, the GMC want to make it easier for busy medical professionals to find the principles they’re looking for. For example, we’re proposing to change the names of the four sections to clearly reflect the content:

• Working with colleagues

• Working with patients

• Professional capabilities

• Maintaining trust.

When reviewing the guidance, we’ve tried to make sure the principles are relevant to all the roles we’ll regulate in the future, and all the settings, specialties and sectors they will work in. When the updated guidance comes into effect, it will also apply to physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AAs), who currently follow interim standards. When we start to regulate them in the coming years, like doctors, PAs and AAs will be expected to follow Good medical practice.

The timeline for this is

• Confirmation of new domain names June 2023

• Revised guidance published June 2023

• New guidance will come into effect in Autumn 2023

What this means to Premier IT and our clients

Providers have been given advanced notice of the changes and have been advised by the GMC to align their systems with the new Good Medical Practice domains by April 2024 in readiness for the start of the new appraisal year.